Healthcare magazine for research scientists, labs, pathologists, hospitals, cancer centers, physicians and biopharma companies providing news articles, expert interviews and videos about molecular diagnostics in precision medicine
Issue link: https://clinicalomics.epubxp.com/i/798822
www.clinicalomics.com March/April 2017 Clinical OMICs 15 Report: Precision Medicine Moving into the Clinic, but Hurdles Remain A new Frost & Sullivan report identi- fies seven drivers likely to propel per- sonalized medicine into broad clinical use over the next eight years—as well as eight challenges that the field must surmount in order for the paradigm to deliver on years of promises that it will revolutionize medical diagnosis, treatment, and practice . "Global Precision Medicine Growth Opportunities, Forecast to 2025," notes the shift from "one-size-fits-all" to targeted treatments, the falling cost of population-level omics profiling due to scientific and technological advancements, and healthcare democ- ratization through digitization . Healthcare digitization will also grow as nontraditional players focused on patient stratification data enter the field, while clinical practices scramble to integrate precision medicine, aided by value-based reimbursement mod- els and healthcare consumerism shift- ing the risk from payers to providers, the report observed . A seventh driver for precision medicine will be the advancement of companion diagnos- tics and targeted therapeutics beyond oncology, toward CNS and cardiovas- cular (CV) diseases. "These include CNS diseases such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer 's," Kamaljit Behera, indus- try analyst, healthcare in Frost & Sul- livan's Visionary Innovation Group, told Clinical OMICs . "Similarly, for CV diseases, com- panion diagnostics tests aim to deter- mine sensitivity to the current drugs and treatments that have a narrow therapeutic index." He cited among examples Celera's development of diagnostic markers for the diagnosis and prediction of therapeutic responses in CV disease, and Roche's development of compan- ion diagnostic tests for acute coronary syndrome . "In addition to CNS and CV, infec- tious diseases also hold good future potential in the CDx and biomarker research space," Behera said. By 2020, he said, advanced clinical decision support systems will evolve to provide combined insight from genomic data with clinical and envi- ronmental information to facilitate targeted diagnostic for personalized treatment decisions . "We anticipate that, in the next two to three years, molecular decision sup- port systems will start bridging the last miles for genomics data into clini- cal workflow," Behera said. Behera cited several challenges that remain toward the adoption of preci- sion medicine approaches to health- care, notably the need to prove that precision clinical approaches work, and the cost of such programs . "Drugs that are developed to tar- get a person's genetics are generally expensive and likely to create steep reimbursement challenges from third- party payers or private insurance companies," he noted. Despite the high costs, there is still significant impetus driving the contin- ued push for more precise drugs and clinical approaches . "Beyond federal investment stim- ulus and advancement in diagnostic technologies, there is an urgent need for more and better-targeted drugs to provide actual treatment options to a majority of the patients volunteering or participating in on-going stud- ies for precision medicine," Behera added . —Alex Philippidis A new report from Frost & Sullivan details the drivers of precision medicine, as healthcare providers move from one-size-fits-all to highly targeted treatments. selvanegra / Getty Images